Friday, July 29. 2005
Taking Back the Universities Horowitz is making progress with his Academic Bill of Rights in Congress, and McDonald warns naive donors and timid trustees to wake up. The serious backlash has begun. The Summers debacle was the turning point, and the Dartmouth trustee election this spring was a ray of hope for a return to sanity.
Monday, June 27. 2005
 The New New Math
The latest Math educational fad is the new multicultural math, as discussed by Diane Ravitch in Opinion Journal. You didn't know it, but your math is a tool of capitalist oppression. (But then why do the kids in China seem to learn it fairly well?) Educational fads, like ebonics and new reading methods, damage kids. I was subject to the "new math" for two years in the 60s and it took me years to get back on track, and I still resent having been a guinea pig for that fiasco. The challenges of math education are several: 1. It's not "fun": Sure it is, with an enthusiastic teacher.
2. It's rigorous, with right and wrong answers: Gee, too bad.
3. You have to master tedious basics before you can move forward: Just like life
4. Sines and cosines can be too abstract for concrete thinking kids: True. So if you don't "get it," you memorize it. It's called "learning it by heart." Read her piece. This New New math is as racist as anything I have ever read: there is no better way to guarantee that "people of color" and women will never master basic life and work skills. You won't know whether to laugh or cry. But I feel sorry for the kids - when they hit trig and pre-calc they won't know what hit them. And God knows, you'll never figure out how to price bonds. Of course, I feel that it is a tragedy that you can graduate from college these days without passing calc and statistics, but I know how it is: They need to fill those seats with "consumers."
Thursday, June 23. 2005
Holy Cow The Great Horowitz wins a big one.
Monday, June 13. 2005
Academic Freedom What does it mean, exactly? Confederate Yankee has the details, with the Shortell situation as the case in point.
Thursday, June 9. 2005
The Harvard Details Sounds like ScrappleFace, but this is real: The report on women in the sciences and engineering recommends that doctoral students in those fields (and eventually grad students in all departments) be required to complete a training course with a component on gender bias. The report also recommends that search committee members undergo mandatory training in implicit bias. Implicit bias (a concept pioneered by Harvard psychologist Mahzarin Banaji, among others) refers to supposed unconscious or hidden prejudices that don't manifest themselves overtly. Read entire on FIRE
Wednesday, June 8. 2005
 Brewton does Dartmouth
Tom Brewton at View from 1776 did a piece on the lack of basic knowledge among Dartmouth kids a week or so ago, and it garnered some attention and argumentation. The lack of a core curriculum doesn't just apply to the great Dartmouth College, it applies almost everywhere nowadays except at Columbia College, and at the University of Chicago, which I believe wisely borrowed Columbia's required series of two years of their required "Humanities" series and two years of "Contemporary Civilization" (which means Classical Greece to 1900, approx.). And because it all flows and inter-relates, with the Humanities series roughly covering stuff that is contemporary with the stuff in CC, you inter-link - and remember it forever. For example, you could be reading the Aeneid in Hum, studying Roman governance in CC, and looking at the effect of Greek art and architecture on Roman civilization ideally at the same time. You can know that these kids will know Augustine from Aquinas, Sophocles from Socrates, Luther from Lucretius, and Burke from Locke, whether they are Math majors or Art History majors. (And they will know, in detail, how the steps and the columns of the Parthenon were carefully mathematically distorted in shape to create an illusion of flat steps and straight columns.) I always felt there could have been a concurrent History of Math, Science and Techology too, as part of the core, but I guess you have to draw a line somewhere. What's the point? The point is that colleges with core curricula have the confidence to make a statement about what they believe is foundationally important for a citizen, with a college education, to know. Columbia's Core Curriculum here. Brewton's piece here. (I know I will get annoyed emails about other excellent colleges with similar curricula - and I'd like to know, but please, be respectful.)
Tuesday, May 31. 2005
Home Schooling Our favorite gun-totin' blogger Kim du Toit has been doing it, and has constructed a curriculum. Go for it, Kim. Man, what a big job.
Sunday, May 22. 2005
This is a re-post:  James Twitchell on Higher Ed, Inc:
"Counting everything but its huge endowment holdings, Higher Ed, Inc., is a $250 to $270 billion business—bigger than religion, much bigger than art. And though no one in the business will openly admit it, getting into college is a cinch. The problem, of course, is that too many students want to get into the same handful of nameplate colleges, making it seem that the entire market is tight. It most certainly is not. Here’s the crucial statistic: There are about 2,500 four-year colleges in this country, and only about 100 of them refuse more applicants than they accept. Most schools accept 80 percent or more of those who apply. It’s the rare student who can’t get in somewhere. "
Another excerpt: "At the turn of the 20th century, one percent of high school graduates attended college; that figure is now close to 70 percent. This is an industry that produces a yearly revenue flow more than six times the revenue generated by the steel industry. Woe to the state without a special funding program (with the word merit in it) that assures middle-class kids who graduate in the upper half of their high school class a pass to State U. College has become what high school used to be, and thanks to grade inflation, it’s almost impossible to flunk out."
I guess it's true what employers in the business world have been complaining about - that a degree from a non-elite college is roughly equivalent to a high-school diploma, unless you do a rigorous major like physics or computer science. What Twitchell's piece adds to the discussion is the role of economics in the degradation of the degree. The saddest thing of all is that people are getting scammed by this selling of credentials that used to mean something. Read here. Also - Name that campus in the photo. First correct emailed answer wins a Maggie's Farm tractor t-shirt, when they come in.
Thursday, May 12. 2005
Campus News, #2 The rebels seem to have won at Dartmouth. This bodes well for sanity in academia, since colleges take their cues from the Ivies just as the MSM take their cues from the NYT. Watch for petition candidates with websites and blogs to storm the barricades at other universities. Ain't it amazing what can happen when people have a real choice?
Campus Update Shame on Columbia and shame on Pres. Bollinger. Their ROTC decision is not only disappointing, but it makes no sense. Opinion Journal: In April 2003, Columbia held a student referendum on ROTC. Two-thirds voted to bring it back. This led the university senate to appoint a 10-member panel to examine the subject; it split down the middle on the question of readmitting ROTC "as soon as is practicable." What are these people thinking? Are they stuck in the 60s? But maybe we shouldn't be too bothered by this. Throughout America, schools such as the University of Missouri continue to graduate outstanding young men such as Lieutenant Edens. He may not have earned an Ivy League degree, but he did earn a nation's respect--which is more than most of Columbia's faculty can ever hope to get. Read entire. But kudos to Dartmouth for their more mature decision-making. Removing politically-correct speech codes seems to be a new trend.
Thursday, May 5. 2005
Island Trees, etc. "In a 1982 case called Island Trees v. Pico, the Supreme Court ruled that school boards can't remove books from a school library just because they don't agree with their content. But in many communities around the country, school administrators and librarians are under heavy pressure from religious and other groups to censor what we read and study. If you believe that your school is censoring books because of their viewpoints, you, your teachers and the school librarian can challenge book censorship at your school or in court. The freedom to read is the freedom to think – and that's totally worth fighting for!" American Civil Liberties Union : Your Right to Free Expression Sure. Fine. But why is it the ACLU must always refer to "religious" groups when pointing out censorship? If this isn't bias, then what is? It is time for the "card carrying" ACLU members to stop the religious paranoia. Censorship is censorship no matter what group is enforcing it.
 The Fawlty Towers of Academe: Analyzing Faculty Unhappiness
Every bright, curious young person has at least once considered a teaching career. Even I did, as an undergraduate. How could one not, spending all of those years surrounded by teachers? It is one of the few careers with which a kid has close experience. Plus it is truly a noble profession, with no heavy lifting, especially at the college level. So why are faculty always griping? Joseph Epstein tries to get to the bottom of this question via his review of Showaler's new book, Faculty Towers: The Academic Novel and its Discontents. My sense is that his essay, which uses the academic novel as a jumping-off point, pertains mainly to faculty in the Humanities if not in Departments of English in particular - a group which, from the point of view of "consumers," seems to have lost its way, forgotten its mission, and sacrificed its prestige. Eptein notes the dream of the academic life: "Universities attract people who are good at school. Being good at school takes a real enough but very small talent. As the philosopher Robert Nozick once pointed out, all those A's earned through their young lives encourage such people to persist in school: to stick around, get more A's and more degrees, sign on for teaching jobs. When young, the life ahead seems glorious. They imagine themselves inspiring the young, writing important books, living out their days in cultivated leisure." But such an idealized vision can never be realized, of course, and then a little envy drops in: "But something, inevitably, goes awry, something disagreeable turns up in the punch bowl. Usually by the time they turn 40, they discover the students aren't sufficiently appreciative; the books don't get written; the teaching begins to feel repetitive; the collegiality is seldom anywhere near what one hoped for it; there isn't any good use for the leisure. Meanwhile, people who got lots of B's in school seem to be driving around in Mercedes, buying million-dollar apartments, enjoying freedom and prosperity in a manner that strikes the former good students, now professors, as not only unseemly but of a kind a just society surely would never permit." And, the final blow - the realization of the triviality of one's "research": "Now that politics has trumped literature in English departments the situation is even worse. Beset by political correctness, self-imposed diversity, without leadership from above, university teachers, at least on the humanities and social-science sides, knowing the work they produce couldn't be of the least possible interest to anyone but the hacks of the MLA and similar academic organizations, have more reason than ever to be unhappy." Epstein cheerfully concludes: "And so let us leave them, overpaid and underworked, surly with alienation and unable to find any way out of the sweet racket into which they once so ardently longed to get." Read entire.
Monday, May 2. 2005
Columbia's ROTC Finally, the good old old Alma Mater will be graced with an ROTC. About time, guys and gals. She will be pleased, as will be most alumni. They were hounded off campus in 1969 in a sick spasm of anti-Americanism to which a lame administration gave in, to the enduring shame of the great and ancient college of Alexander Hamilton and John Jay...and David Horowitz. (Low Library in background, as distinguished from Butler Library - and from Butler Hall - home of the fabulous and fabulously pricey rooftop Terrace. which should be reserved only for the most important and difficult seductions, business or otherwise.) Theocracy Now ! Just like a person who has little to bring to the table, when a political movement finds itself without much to offer, the typical strategy is to attack and to tear down others rather than to compete. (Classic example: Dems going after Laura. No class whatsoever.) We did a theocracy piece last week, and we continue to see this silly angle exploited as a scare and smear tactic. Truly ridiculous. I thought "church ladies" used to be a joke. Now they're dangerous? Come on! This "issue" has as much traction as a BMW in an ice-storm. Thanks, Captains Quarters.
Monday, April 4. 2005
From College An email response to The Barrister's post, from an undergraduate reader: We are entering round two of the Dark Ages. It shall be called "The Darker Ages". It is a time when the typical Earthling student has no idea what the hell is going on in the world, or has ocurred in the world besides his menial existence. If he thinks he does know, he probably is confused or has been brainwashed by the media or psycho professors. In college, a place where people should be deepening their intellect, students are more likely blacked-out drunk in the basement of a frat house or busting their asses on a basketball court in order to get a free ride. These types are the exonerated students at competitive universities such as Georgetown, Princeton, and Johns Hopkins - because they are totally awesome!! Actually, I am not really sure what exonerated means. And I just overhear a dude say to his friend:
"Dude, don't you have class now?"
"Yeah, but whatever, it's just Theology."
Thursday, March 31. 2005
Maybe a bit of rationality will enter the picture. Isn't intent an aspect of determining guilt? These stories remind me of that girl who was suspended for tylenol - it violated the zero tolerance for drugs policy. "HOUSTON – Unaware it had turned cool overnight, Eddie Evans's 12-year-old son bolted out of the house in shirt sleeves. He was on his way to the bus stop when his mother called him back for a jacket. In third period the boy discovered that the three-inch pocketknife he had taken to his last Boy Scout meeting was still inside his coat - a definite no-no under the school's zero-tolerance policy. Unsure what to do, he consulted a friend before putting the knife in his locker. The friend turned him in and, after lunch, police arrested him and took him to a juvenile-detention center without contacting his parents, according to senate testimony"
From: Click here: Why tolerance is fading for zero tolerance in schools | csmonitor.com
Tuesday, March 29. 2005
College Faculty Leftists Hey Howard Kurtz - do you call this news? "College faculties, long assumed to be a liberal bastion, lean further to the left than even the most conspiratorial conservatives might have imagined, a new study says." Why? Either they are much smarter than the rest of us, or it's because they went to school in the 60s, got tenured academic jobs, never dealt with the adult world, and never grew up.
Thursday, March 24. 2005
Brown University How advanced and sophisticated they are over there in Providence. Surely a beacon of reason and hope in a wayward world. An applicant tells me their application form has a part that says: Circle One: Male
Female
Other I must admit I am intrigued by the "Other" category, but in a way that I do not respect in myself, a sort of morbid curiosity, I suppose. The thing that brings people to side shows. At least it doesn't ask "Gender Preference." Heck, who wouldn't want to be a guy? It's not so bad to be one. Or am I hopelessly outdated?
Monday, March 21. 2005
Tuition, etc. We of the oppressed tuition-paying community feel upset whenever reminded that colleges have become propaganda mills. Finally, a movie on the subject - not out yet. Brainwashing 101. Click here: Brainwashing 101 :: AcademicBias.com
|
